him in any real danger, but the issue was not my view of things, but his. I had been ready to accept his reproaches, but the conversation was now taking another turn.
“You're not the one to judge that,” he said. “You have to go through channels, there are public officials, there are investigative committees that deal with—”
“I can't just stick my head in the sand. There's something fishy about this, and the way the police are handling things definitely isn't aboveboard. If you want to know, the—”
“No, I don't want to know. Let's say everything that you're worried about is true—have you spoken to the commissioner in charge of the police officers who have acted wrongly? Have you spoken to your political representative? Have you contacted the press? I'm not saying you should stick your head in the sand, but how can you take it upon yourself to—”
“Take it upon myself?” I got angry. “I've been a man who minds his own business, a cobbler who has stuck to his last too often in life. As a soldier, as a public prosecutor, as a private investigator, I did what I was told, it was my job, and I didn't go messing about in matters that were in other people's domain. What we are is a nation of cobblers who mind their own business, and look where it's gotten us.”
“You're talking about the Third Reich? If only everyone minded his own business But no: The physicians were not satisfied with curing patients, they had to advance the Volk and racial cleansing. The teachers were not satisfied with teaching reading and writing, they had to teach fighting for the fatherland. Judges did not ask what was just, but what they deemed to be good for the nation, what the Führer wanted; and as for the generals—their trade is to fight and win battles, not to transport and shoot Jews, Poles, and Russians. No, Uncle Gerhard, unfortunately we are not a nation that minds its own business!”
“What about the chemists?” Leo asked.
“What about them?”
“The chemists of the Third Reich—I wonder what, in your view, their business was and if they stuck to it?”
Tyberg looked at Leo with a frown. “I have been asking myself that question ever since I started working on my memoirs. I incline to the opinion that a laboratory is a chemist's business. But that would mean that others always bear the responsibility, and that we scientists are never responsible, and I can see the snag in that, especially when it comes from the mouth of a chemist.”
For a while nobody spoke. The butler knocked, and then cleared away the plates. Leo asked him to compliment the cook for the corn biscuits with oxtail and green peppers that had been served as an appetizer. “Polenta medallions,” he corrected her, flattered, as he himself was the cook, and the reintroduction of polenta as a culinary delicacy was a cherished objective of his. He proposed that we step into the drawing room for a liqueur.
Leo got up, came over to me, and looked at me question-ingly. I nodded. “You don't have to come upstairs, Gerhard. I'll pack your things, too.” She gave me a quick kiss and I listened to her steps as her bare feet pattered on the stone slabs of the stairs. The floorboards upstairs creaked.
Tyberg cleared his throat. He stood behind his chair, his shoulders drooping, his arms resting on the chair back. “At our age we don't get to know and treasure that many people that we can afford to lose them. Please don't leave now.”
“I'm not leaving in anger, and I'd be happy to come back another time. But Leo and I—we really belong in a hotel.”
“Let me have a word with her.” He left the room and returned a little while later with Leo. She looked at me ques-tioningly again and I smiled at her questioningly. She shrugged her shoulders.
We spent the evening on the terrace. Tyberg read to us from his memoirs, and Leo found out how his and my paths had crossed during the war. The candle, by the light of which Tyberg was reading, flickered. I could not interpret the expression in Leo's eyes. At times bats rustled over our heads. They flew toward the house, and right before the wall their flight veered off abruptly into the emptiness of the night.
The following morning I was alone. Leo's things were no longer in the room. I looked in vain for a note. It